2,618 Quotes by Haruki Murakami

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.

If, as the dowager had said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives? Wouldn't our genetic purpose-to transmit DNA-be served just as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?

Stories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.

The young man knows that he is irretrievably lost. This is no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place where he is meant to be lost. It is another world, which has been prepared especially for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to take him back to the world he came from.

It is sometimes necessary for each person. Fill up with delicious food, get drunk, sing loudly and chat frivolously.

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

Her smile steps offstage for a moment, then does an encore, all while I'm dealing with my blushing face.

In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster.

Listen to this, Nimit. Follow Coleman Hawkins' improvised lines very carefully. He is using them to tell us something. Pay very close attention. He is telling us the story of the free spirit that is doing everything it can to escape from within him. That same kind of spirit is inside me, inside you. There-you can hear it, I'm sure: the hot breath, the shivering heart. (Thailand)